Former marine and single mother Sam (Rebecca Rogers) is on maternity leave. Her baby needs medication, so she leaves the kid home alone and runs to the pharmacy. Sam is abducted. She wakes up in a locked-down warehouse. A mysterious voice informs her that her child will be killed unless she “plays the game.” It’s…
In the opening minutes of The Kill Team, we see brief glimpses of optimism, national pride, and infantry brotherhood from our titular platoon of soldiers — all of which ends up shattered well before the ten-minute mark as the horrors of wartime and their effect on those involved make themselves abruptly known. Nat Wolff (“Home…
J.C. Chandor’s (“All Is Lost”) Amazonian heist thriller, Triple Frontier, has a stellar cast and equally impressive cinematography — as some of Hollywood’s most recognizable stars traverse South American rainforests and mountainous peaks to lift hundreds of millions of dollars off a local drug lord. While some of the narrative feels somewhat tired — as…
Director Peter Jackson’s body of work is extensive. He brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga to life in two award-winning trilogies, and his films have garnered dozens of Oscar nominations. Despite these cinematic feats, he perhaps has never helmed a project as significant as his 2018 documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old. The…
Altogether, Hostiles is both sprawling and narrow, profoundly tense and equally mellow. That might sound like a film of contradictions — a message too lost in the majestic western landscapes. That’s not quite the case, though. Scott Cooper’s western carries the same slow-burn sensibilities as his 2013 down-home thriller, “Out of the Furnace,” which also,…
One of the important messages of Thank You for Your Service, first-time director Jason Hall’s perceptive drama about the physical and psychological effects of war, is that returning veterans need to be able to talk about what happened in combat and how they have been personally affected by it. Too often, however, friends or loved…
War is hell even under optimal conditions, but when you do not know who your friends are or even who you can and cannot trust, it gets even darker. Just ask Private Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell, “Unbroken”), a raw recruit in the British Army who, contrary to his expectations of being sent to Germany, winds…
